It has been an ignoble death, stretched out over these many months. From the endless teevee news diagrams of his feeding tube to that NY Press cover to all that Pope Watching at the hospital, it has not been a prime example of death with dignity. The Pope still breathes tonight, although he has reportedly received Last Rites.

As the Pope has lost the ability to speak for himself, the spokesmen at the Vatican have offered transparently ridiculous descriptions of a mute, bedridden pontiff directing the affairs of the Church through his Bishops and advisors. The truth is that the Catholic Church doesn’t need the Pope to continue operations. He’s mostly a figurehead. It is my dark belief that the Vatican has kept John Paul II alive only so long that he wouldn’t die on the same day as Terri Schiavo and have to share the covers of all those American tabloids. Instead he gets to die on April Fools Day. Much more appropriate.

As irrelevant as the Holy See is to the daily operations of the Catholic Church, he’s even more so to the beliefs of the vast majority of American Catholics. Don’t get me wrong. Catholics love the Pope. He’s such a cuddly old bigot. But a narrow-minded bigot he is. How many Catholics agree with the Church’s prejudice against gays? How many Catholics use birth control? Who actually listens to the Pope? (Heck, I wish more people would listen to his strong words against capital punishment!)

It reminds me of a funny joke from the BBC comedy, “The Young Ones,” in which two cops are idly discussing their weekend. One of the cops had spent the weekend meeting his girlfriend’s parents. The dinner went well, he reported, until he started criticizing the Pope. “That’s stupid,” his partner retorts, “You know she’s Catholic.” “Yeah,” he says, “but I didn’t know the Pope was.”

The anticipated passing of John Paul II is cause for real concern. Over the course of his two and a half decades in Rome, he has basically appointed all of the Bishops and Cardinals who currently serve the Church and who will choose his successor. Almost to a man, they are reactionary, arch-conservatives. While many of the world’s religions have been busy pursuing a narrowly conservative political agenda, the Catholic Church has mostly abstained from direct politicking. The next Pope might change all that.